I wanted to let you know that we are now out of free TPM 25th anniversary baseball caps and t-shirts that we were giving away as inducements for people to become members of TPM or upgrade their memberships. Thanks to everyone who took us up on the offer. Your ultra-merch should either be in your hands or on the way.
I wanted to add an important additional point. This isn’t the last chance. A number of you wrote in asking if you could simply purchase a piece of ultra-merch or why newbs were getting first dibs while years-long-members were shut out. Here’s the deal.
The ultra-merch we commissioned for the 25th anniversary was also basically a proof of concept. We wanted to find good suppliers and get a sense of pricing and so forth for a different quality tier of clothing, something a few notches above the standard made-to-order, meh-quality stuff that any substack can set up to sell in a few minutes, stuff that is essentially a novelty. We wanted stuff that that was of quality you’d feel good wearing as a simple garment. That’s a different part of the clothing commission industry; pricing is different, fulfillment is different. And what we found is really nice stuff. Like the high end version of the kind of baseball cap you might buy from an MLB team or the kind of well-made t-shirt you might buy at a real clothing store. So it was done with the expectation that we would start selling similar ultra-merch in the new year. So there’s more coming and that was the point all along.
